In late June of 1942, Shannon was assigned to Engineer Replacement Center, Corps of Engineers, Platoon 3, Company C, 6th Battalion, Fort Belvoir, Virginia. At Fort Belvoir, he underwent 14 weeks of basic training as a Combat Engineer. With his training completed, he awaited orders to go overseas. After a knee injury he entered Fort Belvoir Station Hospital for cartilage surgery. While recovering in the hospital he received orders to join the Fort Belvoir Engineer Replacement Training Center Art Section’s Mural Project.
It was a project which utilized the talents of Combat Engineer Trainees who in their civilian lives had been professional artists. The murals, celebrating the daily experiences of men undergoing Engineer basic training, were executed to relieve the drabness of the expanding facilities at Fort Belvoir. The National Gallery, the Corcoran Art Gallery and the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington, D.C. and The Museum of Modern Art in New York City as well as the commanding officers at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, all contributed material and moral support for the project.
While Shannon was in Fort Belvoir Station Hospital, he had been impressed with the good natured camaraderie of the Black and White engineers who were hospitalized there. This became the inspiration for his mural, Convalescence, which he executed for the post hospital.
Convalescene, Oil on Canvas, 1942
After completing the mural, Shannon received word of his probable selection for the War Department’s newly formed War Art Unit, whose intent was to send artists into active warfare to obtain a graphic record of the war. As artist and advisory committee member, Henry Varner Poor, phrased it: “The United States must take a lead and find some way of getting from our finest artists and writers the thing they alone can give-a deeply, passionately felt, but profoundly reflective interpretation of the spirit and essence of war.” Visual artists were encouraged to interpret the war on their own terms without limitations.
Art Digest, May 1, 1943
In April 1943, Shannon (age 28) received orders to become a member of the War Department’s three-man South Pacific War Art Unit along with artists Howard Cook (age 42) and Aaron Bohrod (age 36), both civilians. They set up a base studio in Noumea, New Caledonia in May 1943. On June 30, 1943, they accompanied the troops in the evasion of Rendova Island, Solomon Island Campaign, the first move north after Guadalcanal. Upon returning to New Caledonia, they were informed that the War Department War Artist Unit had been terminated by Congress. On October 24, 1943, in an article, Belvoir Murals Called to Public Attention by Army Show Sketches,Washington Post, Jane Watson stated: “Among the artists in this mural project whose sketches were seen in Washington this fall is a young Alabama painter, now Tech Sergt. Charles Shannon, who has since seen action in the South Pacific where he was sent on a special assignment. Charles Shannon, before he was inducted in 1942, was beginning to be recognized as one of the most promising painters of the younger generation.” A Charles Shannon sketch for his mural, Convalescence, was reproduced for the article.
In mid-December, Shannon returned to the United States and was reassigned to the Engineer Replacement Training Center’s special schools at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. While on leave in Montgomery, he married Blanche Belzer, who had been a member of New South.
In February 1944, after returning to Fort Belvoir, Shannon had the opportunity to view an exhibition of Chinese paintings on loan to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. by the Chiang-Kai-Shak government. Since the study of oriental art was almost completely ignored in the standard art education Shannon had received, the exhibition proved to be seminal in his development as an artist. The simplicity and spirituality of the great Southern Sung paintings became a source of inspiration to which he would often return.
On February 20, 1944 the exhibition, Army at War, opened at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The exhibition featured work by the artists of the War Department's War Art Unit and was organized by Forbes Watson, U.S. Treasury Department. Charles Shannon paintings, Cargo and Victory Bar were exhibited. The exhibition traveled throughout the country and to London, England.
On July 4, 1944, Charles Shannon's ink and wash drawing, Assault (Landing at Rendova) was exhibited in, American Battle Art:1588-1944, which opened at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, October 2, 1944 -November 18, 1944
Digging In/Rendova Island Invasion, Ink on Paper, June 1943
On July 21, 1944, Shannon was assigned to the Training Aids Branch of the Information and Educational Division, Army Service Forces, on 42nd Street, New York City. While stationed there, Shannon was picture editor and an illustrator for a series of discussion pamphlets made available by the War Department under the title GI Roundtable Series, for which he received a commendation.
GI Roundtable Series pamphlets provided material which Information-Education officers, of all branches of the military and Voice of America radio used in conducting group discussions or forums as part of an off-duty education program. The texts of the GI Roundtable pamphlets were prepared by the Historical Service Board of the American Historical Association and the War Department. The topics of the pamphlets ranged from economic and cultural anxieties at home, to foreign policy issues in a postwar world.
Five months after the end of WWII, Shannon was honorably discharged from the Army at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
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